There's a big Assassin's Creed III feature in the latest issue of Game Informer magazine, and having just thumbed through it, there's some interesting stuff not already revealed in there that's worth pointing out.

His name is Ratohnhaké:ton, but you can call him Connor. The latest Assassin's Creed hero…
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About trees. And Generals. And snow. And the great American frontier.

NICE NIGHT FOR A WALK

Previous games had a day/night cycle, but ACIII goes one step further and has a seasonal cycle. So during your travels the cities and countryside of the North American colonies will bleed from summer to winter, the latter bringing with it deep snow and complete changes to the animation and capabilities of the game's hero, Connor.

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BIG COUNTRY

The game features both Boston and New York, both pivotal locations in the War of Independence, but in between them it has something a lot bigger: the "frontier". This stretch of wilderness is 1.5x the size of the entire game world in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, meaning there should be plenty of places to climb trees, shimmy up mountains and hunt wild animals (for furs and money, of course, and the better the kill, the bigger the reward).

THE THIRTY YEARS WAR

Like Ezio's tale, Connor's will run its course over decades. The game kicks off in 1753, with the colonies still happily a possession of the mother country, and will finish in 1783, the same year the Treaty of Paris brought an end to the War of Independence.

SUPPORTING CAST

Some of the real historical figures already confirmed to be making an appearance in ACIII are George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and, most interestingly, the equally heroic and tragic British-then-American General Charles Lee. The Game Informer story says "a large majority" of characters you meet in the game are actual historical figures, a first for the series.

TOWER DEFENCE

That awful "tower defence" mode from Revelations is gone. Phew.

BLACK, WHITE, GREY

Ubisoft says the game will be trying to avoid making the war, and its combatants, a simplistic good vs evil struggle. There'll be bad Americans and good Brits, and the motives of both the Assassin's and Templars will be shown to similarly murky.

You can read a whole lot more on the game in the latest issue of Game Informer, digital copy linked below.